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“JERUSALEM – For more than a decade, Israel has systematically built up its military specifically for a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. It has sent its air force on long-distance training missions, procured American-made ‘bunker-busting’ bombs and bolstered its missile defenses.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats to strike Iran, voiced last week during a high-profile visit to the White House, were not empty bluster. Although a unilateral Israeli attack would probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program, it appears capable, at least for now, of inflicting a serious blow.

‘If Israel attacks, the intention is more to send a message of determination, a political message instead of a tactical move,’ said Yiftah Shapir, a former Israeli air force officer who is now a military analyst at the INSS think tank in Tel Aviv.

Israel, along with the United States and other Western countries, believes Iran has taken key steps toward developing nuclear weapons. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency has cited this concern in reports, but notes its inspectors have found no direct evidence that Iran is moving toward an atomic weapon.

Israeli leaders, however, argue that time is quickly running out. They have grown increasingly vocal in their calls for tough concerted international action against Iran while stressing they are prepared to act alone if necessary.

Israeli defense officials believe Iran is capable of producing highly enriched weapons-grade uranium within six months. After that, it would require another year or two to develop a means of delivering a nuclear bomb, they predict.

But Israel believes the window to act will close much sooner than that.” Read more.

Israel develops its own bunker buster – “Israel has developed an improved precision, bunker-burrowing weapon which Israeli Military Industries (IMI) unveiled on March 6. The 500-pound MPR-500 is an electro-optical (laser-guided) bomb that can penetrate double-reinforced concrete walls or floors without breaking apart. The bomb was shown in action penetrating four reinforced concrete walls with fragmentation from the explosion limited to a radius of less than three meters. The new weapon is designed as an upgrade for the US Mk82 in Israel Air Force stocks. ‘The lethality, precision… and relatively low weight of the new weapon,’ say its manufacturers, ‘enable its use against multiple targets in a single pass.’ After blowing the first hole in the targeted underground site, the next bombs continue to extend and deepen it.” Read more.

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“FORT ABBAS, Pakistan, March 12 (CDN) — A young mother has been falsely accused of ‘blaspheming’ Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, because she rebuffed attempts by relatives who had converted to Islam to force her to renounce her Christian faith, family members said.

Police in Khichiwala, Bahawalnagar district, in Punjab Province, charged 26-year-old Shamim Bibi, mother of a 5-month-old girl and resident of the village Chak No. 170/7R Colony, in the Fort Abbas area, under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s ‘blasphemy’ statutes after neighbors accused her of uttering remarks against Muhammad. She was arrested on Feb. 28.

Speaking ill of Muhammad in Pakistan is punishable by life imprisonment or death under Pakistan’s internationally condemned blasphemy laws.

The young woman’s brother, Ilyas Masih, and her brother-in-law, Shahbaz Masih, told Compass that she had been wrongly accused because she had resisted pressure to convert to Islam four days before her arrest.

‘Nazeeran, sister of Shamim’s husband Bashir Masih, and her nephew Nadeem and niece Bella accepted Islam on Feb. 24 and called on her to do the same,’ Masih said. ‘She refused, telling them that she was satisfied with Christianity and did not want to convert.’

He said the newly-converted Muslims persisted in trying to force her to convert, but she resisted.

‘Shamim told them that she had complete faith in a living God, and that there was no reason for her to start ‘worshiping graves,’’ Masih said.

That remark was not the one deemed ‘blasphemous.’ Rather, on Feb. 27 her neighbors accused her of making derogatory remarks – as yet unknown – on a separate occasion about Muhammad while in her courtyard.

Ansar Ali Shah, a local prayer leader in Chak 170/7R Colony, claimed that Shamim Bibi’s neighbors, Hamad Ahmed Hashmi and Abdul Qayyum, told him and other Muslims that they had heard the Christian woman making derogatory remarks about Muhammad in her courtyard, according to the First Information Report (FIR No. 30/12) registered by the Khichiwala police station. But there is no indication in the FIR of what, exactly, Shamim Bibi was alleged to have said.

As word of the allegation spread, a large crowd of villagers besieged her house and demanded ‘severe punishment for the infidel,’ claiming she had hurt their religious sentiments, sources said.” Read more.

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According to senior Afghan clerics, the burning of these Qur’ans can never be forgiven. But now that a probe into the matter has concluded that troops involved had no malicious intent, can it be forgotten? …

By Kristina Wong – “The Pentagon said Tuesday that a joint NATO-Afghan investigation into the burning of Korans at Bagram Air Field has been completed.

The investigation found that the ‘disposal process’ of the Korans was improper but was not a malicious act intended to show disrespect for Afghans or Islam.

The probe was conducted by the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan Ministry of Defense.

‘It did find that there were some U.S. personnel who did improperly treat these religious texts, including some of their supervisory personnel,’ said Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. ‘And it recommended that they be reviewed for potential disciplinary action.’

The Korans ended up in an incinerator after Afghan prisoners were found using the holy books to pass messages to one another.” Read more.

Flashback: Afghan investigator: US burning of Qurans was intentional – “The burning of copies of the Quran at an American base in Afghanistan was intentional, said a member of the team investigating the incident that triggered widespread and deadly anti-Western protests. ‘We believe it is intentional,’ Maulavi Khaliqdad, a member of the panel established by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Monday. ‘If they burnt one or two copies, then we could have said it could have been a mistake. But they took hundreds of such books to burn. Everyone knew those were religious books.’” Read more.

Flashback: Senior Afghan Clerics to Obama Over Qur’an Burnings: Your Apology for this ‘Inhumane, Savage’ Act Can ‘Never Be Accepted’ – “Senior Afghan clerics said on Friday the burning of Korans at a NATO base last month was an ‘evil act’ that must be punished, a demand that could deepen widespread public anger over the incident. ‘The council strongly condemns this crime and inhumane, savage act by American troops by desecrating holy Korans,’ members of a council of clerics said after meeting President Hamid Karzai, according to a statement issued by his office. ‘The council emphasized that the apology for this evil act can never be accepted. Those who committed this crime must be publicly tried and punished.’” Read more.

Ezekiel 38:10-12, “… It shall also come to pass, [that] at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thy hand upon the desolate places [that are now] inhabited, and upon the people [that are] gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.”

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu – “Israel has struck oil again, this time off the Tel Aviv coast. Developers maintain the find includes 100 million barrels of oil, worth $10 billion.

Modiin Energy and Adira Energy discovered an estimated 128 million barrels of oil and 1.8 trillion cubic feet of gas in their Gabriella and Yitzhak licenses, in shallow water less than 15 miles northwest of Tel Aviv.

Officials called the find ‘significant’ and added, ‘Surveys conducted in recent months found oil in the target strata. The potential oil reservoir is 128 million barrels of oil, and the contingent reserves are an additional 120 million barrels.’

‘Bottom line, there is oil. It’s 100 percent. Secondly, the quantities are commercial,’ said Tzachi Sultan, controlling shareholder of Modiin.

The Gabriella license is near shore in shallow water. ‘At a time of soaring oil prices, this is good news for IDB, Modiin, Adira, said Chaim Gavriella, CEO of the IDB holding company that owns most of Gabriella’s shares.

The oil was defined as ‘ high quality’ and reportedly can be extracted even easier than the gas.” Read more.

Will energy production start a new ‘revolution’ in the Middle East? – “Scenes of carnage and upheaval have been playing out for so many decades in the Middle East – car bombings, terrorist attacks, wars, intifadas, and the slightly more optimistic images associated with the Arab Spring – that they are by now well familiar. But there is another revolution in the Mideast, presently underway, that is not being televised. It centers on the all-important area of energy production, and it might be called, ‘the Battle for Leviathan.’ At issue is the recent discovery of huge untapped natural gas fields in the Levant Basin, the section of the eastern Mediterranean Sea that abuts Israel to the East, and Cyprus to the North. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that this underwater area holds 123 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. In simpler terms: That’s equal to 20 billion barrels of oil, more than twenty times what the United States maintains in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” Read more.

Seems like many in the “Magnolia state” believe that there’s a “rotten apple” in the White House. Public Policy Polling released the results of a recent poll on Monday revealing that a majority of likely GOP voters in Mississippi believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim. When Republicans in Alabama were asked, “Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure?” 45% answered “Muslim,” 41% answered “not sure,” and only 14% selected “Christian.” In Mississippi, a full 52% believed Obama was “Muslim,” 36% selected “not sure,” and just 12% believed he was “Christian.”

This behavior corresponds with why he has treated Israel – the only true democracy and proven ally in the Middle East – more like an enemy while treating Israel’s enemies more like a friend. He has bowed down to the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation whose religious textbooks continue to fuel anti-Semitism, hatred and terrorism around the world. He continues to supportRead more…

“Climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia over the past two years, the Asian Development Bank said Tuesday in a report calling for swift action to avert future crises.

‘Asia and the Pacific is the global area most prone to natural disasters, both in terms of the absolute number of disasters and of populations affected,’ said the report launched in Bangkok, which was itself affected by flooding last year.

About 31.8 million people in the region were displaced by climate-related disasters and extreme weather in 2010 — a particularly bad year — including more than 10 million in Pakistan owing to massive flooding.

A further 10.7 million were forced to flee their homes last year, it said, warning that such events will become more frequent with climate change.

‘While many of those displaced returned to their homes as conditions improved, others were less fortunate, struggling to build new lives elsewhere after incurring substantial personal losses,’ ADB vice president Bindu Lohani said in a foreword to the report, released at an Asian climate forum.” Read more.

Flashback: Millions Without Drinking Water As China’s Largest Inland Lake Dries Up; Half of Country’s Rice Fields Affected, 80% of Fish Stocks Die in Hubei Province – “The volume of water in Poyang lake in Jiangxi province, normally 100 miles-long and 10 miles-wide, is now a tenth of its normal level, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. Fishing boats and house boats have been left stranded on a vast stretch of the lake bed, now a lush grassland. The drought, which has seen no rainfall for two months, has struck the central Chinese provinces that are known as the country’s ‘home of rice and fish’. Almost half of all the country’s rice fields have been affected and four million people do not have access to drinking water.” Read more.

By Catherine Herridge – “The New York Police Department has faced criticism for its surveillance of the Muslim community, but one prominent Muslim journalist defended the department in an interview with Fox News.

‘We use religion as a cover,’ said Asra Nomani, a 46-year-old journalist whose work has been published by the Wall Street Journal and The Daily Beast. Nomani, a native of India, says radical ideology is very real — and damaging to all Muslims.

‘We’re saying that you can’t go into our mosques, you can’t look at our Muslim organizations, you can’t even look at Muslims because that’s to target us,’ she told Fox News during an interview in suburban Washington. ‘But the truth is, we do have a problem in our Muslim community.’

Nomani showed Fox News a Koran from a mosque in West Virginia. She says the Koran’s Saudi publisher added negative language about Jews and Christians. This interpretation of Islam, Nomani says, is part of a larger problem.

‘I think that there is a movement in America right now to claim this concept of Islamophobia, to say that people are hating on Islam,’ she said. ‘Let’s be honest, there are people that do hate on Islam. But I think that (Police Commissioner) Ray Kelly and the New York Police Department have been targeted in this larger campaign to try to show that people are picking on Muslims.'” Read more.

Flashback: New Study Shows That 80% of Mosques in America Teach Jihad Violence and Islamic Supremacism – “… Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule. And now comes yet more confirmation that mosques in the U.S. are teaching these things, and again the percentage is remarkably similar: around 80% of mosques are found to be teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism. This study is extensive and detailed.” Read more.

Flashback: Report: Saudis Export Anti-Christian and Anti-Jewish Textbooks that Continue to Fuel Intolerance and Violence Around the Globe – “Textbooks used in Saudi Arabia’s schools contain virulent forms of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry that continue to fuel intolerance and violence around the globe, says a new report… ‘Because of the Saudis’ great oil wealth, it is able to disseminate its textbooks … to many Muslim schools, mosques and libraries throughout the world. ‘This is not just hate mongering, it’s promoting violence,’ she said in an interview. It is exporting terrorism through textbooks. Christians are referred to as ‘swine’ and Jews as ‘apes,’ while being blamed for much of the world’s ills.” Read more.

The Alabama Senate election was about everything except Alabama. And in the end, Alabamans stayed home and let the inevitable turnout tide of passion politics take its course. Minority voters rallied to Obama. Republicans stayed home. And the GOP is now holding on to a bare one-seat Senate majority. The Democrats had abandoned Alabama, along with much of the […]

In Congress (Al Franken, John Conyers), entertainment (Harvey Weinstein, Ben Affleck) and the establishment media (Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose), women are stepping up with charges of sexual harassment, and in some cases powerful men are stepping down. As this unfolds, one key abuser has managed to avoid both the outcry and the scrutiny he deserves. Imran Awan […]

Editor's note: Below are the video and transcript of remarks given by J. Christian Adams at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2017 Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 16th-19th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. J. Christian Adams: I'm going to talk to you today about what's going on at the Justice Department, is the […]

The Trump administration has decided to withdraw from participation in the United Nations Global Compact on Migration, representing another significant departure from the global governance policies of the Obama administration. In September 2016, during the waning days of the Obama administration, the United States had joined with the other member states of t […]

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Reprinted from the Gatestone Institute. One month after Islamic militants bombed two Egyptian churches during Palm Sunday and killed nearly 50 people in April 2017, on Friday, May 26, several SUVs stopped two buses transporting dozens of Christians to visit and pray at the ancient Co […]

In an unprecedented move, President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday, December 6, 2017, that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital. In an almost 20-minute speech, President Trump said, “I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” Trump added, “For more than two decades previous presi […]

In the twentieth century, targets were churches and synagogues; today, they are churches, synagogues, mosques, temples -- wherever there is a faith, even a Muslim one, that these Islamic fundamentalists want to "purify". Radical Islam has declared war on

What is genuinely troubling was the way in which Robert Levinson's fate has been kept largely secret. The Iranian authorities have never revealed who captured him, who currently holds him, what charges have been laid against him, or even if he is still

Saudi influence on American administrations, and relationships between senior officials in both countries, is behind Washington's ignoring Riyadh's "well-established... involvement in supporting terrorism and terrorist groups." — Report by the Institute

Every German knows that hardly any asylum seekers whose applications are rejected are forced to leave Germany. But if their application is rejected and they do decide to return to their home country, they are rewarded with an allowance of between €1000

Even if all current 28 EU members, plus Norway and Switzerland, closed their borders to migrants, the Islamic population will continue to exponentiate.... Today, it is an increase of six million in seven years. And tomorrow? What will happen in major

President Trump's announcement Wednesday that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital was both correct and prudent from America's perspective. Much more remains to be done to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to

The reaction around the world in recent days has been a reminder of the one central truth of the whole conflict. Those who cannot accept that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel tend to be exactly the same as those who cannot accept the State

ICC Note: The Islamic State is using sick and desperate tactics on the Mosul front line battle. Recent footage published by the group shows militants strapping explosives to a puppy to be sent out to blow up enemy troops. There is no end to what ISIS will do to maintain their land grab. 03/01/2017 Iraq (Christian Post): The Express shared a link to the video […]

ICC Note: The atrocities committed across the Middle East are widespread and extensive, however, it is Christians, Yazidis and other minorities that are facing total annihilation through genocide. It is for this exact reason that religious minorities should get a priority in refugee orders, because they face total genocide in their home countries. 02/24/2017 […]

ICC Note: Another Coptic Egyptian man has been gunned down in Al-Arish by suspected ISIS terrorists. Kamal Youssef, a local plumber and Christian, was shot multiple times in front of his wife and children in his home. This is the sixth Copt killed in the Sinai after the Islamic State in Egypt released a video promising the annihilation of Christians in the n […]